Abstract

Both Scotland and South Africa received the rule of Roman law in terms of which a seller of property was obliged to maintain the buyer in possession but not obliged to make the buyer owner; there was, in other words, a warranty against eviction rather than an outright warranty of title. In both Scotland and South Africa, too, there has since been a move in the direction of a warranty of title so that today there is an ungainly, and possibly unstable, combination of the two types of warranty. This essay traces and compares the development of the implied warranty in respect of title in Scotland and South Africa.